A few questions.Do we want to include the Tales of EAS Janus campaign? The link on http://babylon.hard-light.net/links.php is dead but I have a local copy.Is the point of this project just to fix bugs or will we eventually rebalance missions as well?Lastly I've noticed the glide mode differs from Diaspora's, in that you can accelerate with the afterburner while glide is on. Is this intentional or a limitation from when it was implemented? If it was a limitation, should it be changed?Also, the website has a lot of dead links and needs updating.

I recall it was an engine limitation. A diaspora-style glide would be A) true to the show and B) what was intended, at least from my perspective.On the other hand, I was not around when these decisions were made.

If we're talking about Starfury maneuvering, they should work on strictly Newtonian physics based on the show where to turn about, they had to apply forward thrust on one side of the craft, aft thrust on the other side, and counter it so they didn't just spin. They wouldn't technically have a top speed other than "too much delta vee to be able to come to rest relative to original frame of reference with remaining engine power." Afterburner in a Newtonian flight model would just add more speed on current heading or it would apply thrust on a different vector. Or are you saying that currently, afterburner just accelerates you on your current vector regardless of which direction the craft faces?

I was wrong. In both Diaspora and TBP, the afterburner accelerates you in the direction you are facing, even if you are gliding. I'm not sure why I thought the afterburner had no effect while gliding in Diaspora. The difference is that in Diaspora, when the afterburner is exhausted, your gliding speed decreases to the regular top speed whereas in TBP, your gliding speed stays at the afterburner top speed.The question still remains which behavior we want.

I was wrong. In both Diaspora and TBP, the afterburner accelerates you in the direction you are facing, even if you are gliding. I'm not sure why I thought the afterburner had no effect while gliding in Diaspora. The difference is that in Diaspora, when the afterburner is exhausted, your gliding speed decreases to the regular top speed whereas in TBP, your gliding speed stays at the afterburner top speed.The question still remains which behavior we want.

In that case, the slow decay is the new feature that wasn't available back in the TBP days so clearly it should be used here.

<MageKing17> "There's probably a reason the code is the way it is" is a very dangerous line of thought. <MageKing17> Because the "reason" often turns out to be "nobody noticed it was wrong".(the very next day)<MageKing17> this ****ing code did it to me again<MageKing17> "That doesn't really make sense to me, but I'll assume it was being done for a reason."<MageKing17> **** ME<MageKing17> THE REASON IS PEOPLE ARE STUPID<MageKing17> ESPECIALLY ME

<MageKing17> God damn, I do not understand how this is breaking.<MageKing17> Everything points to "this should work fine", and yet it's clearly not working.<MjnMixael> 2 hours later... "God damn, how did this ever work at all?!"(...)<MageKing17> so<MageKing17> more than two hours<MageKing17> but once again we have reached the inevitable conclusion<MageKing17> How did this code ever work in the first place!?

<@The_E> Welcome to OpenGL, where standards compliance is optional, and error reporting inconsistent

<MageKing17> It was all working perfectly until I actually tried it on an actual mission.

<IronWorks> I am useful for FSO stuff again. This is a red-letter day!* z64555 erases "Thursday" and rewrites it in red ink

<MageKing17> TIL the entire homing code is held up by shoestrings and duct tape, basically.

It's newer, but that doesn't mean it's correct. In a few missions that extra speed was damn useful. That one in Raider Wars where you have to avoid the enemy for instance. To be honest I've never really understood why people want the afterburner speed to decay away in the first place. It makes something that doesn't make much sense (a top speed in space) make even less sense.

Worse still is the fact that in FS when you throttle back, you slow down to relative rest a LOT faster than you would lose speed even in atmosphere in FS. It's almost like in the FS universe, the once theorized ether is a thing, and ships actually have some feature that creates drag or friction with the ether, even more than an atmosphere provides to an airplane. At least in the B5-verse, the ex-tee craft that do this have the excuse of that's how a gravitic drive works. But in FS, everything looks to be using standard action/reaction thrusters. Anyway, to tie this back to the discussion at hand, speed imparted by an extra thrust from afterburner has no business decaying when in glide mode. It's even more silly than throttling down bringing your ship to relative rest when you use a standard action/reaction drive instead of gravitics.

Well I'm not really worried about the physics cause that's already nonsense either way. So since this can't be about realism, I'm just trying to get a handle on a gameplay reason why this is a good idea.

It's the subspace drives. Whenever they're powered up, they create an interface with subspace that affects the craft's performance in realspace. However, it also allows craft to use subspace like atmosphere when turning (rather than flipping around and applying thrust opposite the desired direction of travel, they can bank using the drag their subspace drive creates).

...Or some technobabble like that. Throw in a few techy pieces like "flux-transmorgrification high-bypass resolution inhibiting reactive capacitors" and there you go.

Well I'm not really worried about the physics cause that's already nonsense either way. So since this can't be about realism, I'm just trying to get a handle on a gameplay reason why this is a good idea.

Because flying at afterburner speeds 100% of the time without consuming fuel is poor game balance.

<MageKing17> "There's probably a reason the code is the way it is" is a very dangerous line of thought. <MageKing17> Because the "reason" often turns out to be "nobody noticed it was wrong".(the very next day)<MageKing17> this ****ing code did it to me again<MageKing17> "That doesn't really make sense to me, but I'll assume it was being done for a reason."<MageKing17> **** ME<MageKing17> THE REASON IS PEOPLE ARE STUPID<MageKing17> ESPECIALLY ME

<MageKing17> God damn, I do not understand how this is breaking.<MageKing17> Everything points to "this should work fine", and yet it's clearly not working.<MjnMixael> 2 hours later... "God damn, how did this ever work at all?!"(...)<MageKing17> so<MageKing17> more than two hours<MageKing17> but once again we have reached the inevitable conclusion<MageKing17> How did this code ever work in the first place!?

<@The_E> Welcome to OpenGL, where standards compliance is optional, and error reporting inconsistent

<MageKing17> It was all working perfectly until I actually tried it on an actual mission.

<IronWorks> I am useful for FSO stuff again. This is a red-letter day!* z64555 erases "Thursday" and rewrites it in red ink

<MageKing17> TIL the entire homing code is held up by shoestrings and duct tape, basically.

You fly in one direction and can't alter your heading without expending afterburner fuel. So there is a trade off. It's not something you can constantly do in combat so I don't see anything game-breaking about it.